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Algonquin Park is no place for a cottage. Or is it?

Ontario wants to extend cottage leases in Algonquin Provincial Park. But will that harm the environment?

Valerie and Frank Argue hold a model of their Algonquin cabin in their home in downtown Toronto. They're anxiously waiting to hear whether the province will renew their lease. The bronze was made by Brenda Wainman Goulet, who has a studio on Walker Lake, near Huntsville.
(Colin McConnell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Sandro ContentaFeature Writer

Sun., Jan. 6, 2013

Twelve years ago, Frank Argue was being wheeled into an operating room for “radical” cancer surgery. He squeezed his wife’s hand and imagined the most soothing and encouraging thing he could.

“Next stop, Algonquin Park,” he told his wife, Valerie. Two months later they were relaxing at their cabin on Smoke Lake.

Today, Argue’s 88 years and the fact he can no longer drive make the trip from his downtown Toronto home to the provincial park somewhat more difficult. Yet every summer, the Argues motor their small boat to a pine-covered point, heave themselves onto the dock and lug supplies 45 metres to a one-room vertical log cabin with no plumbing or electricity. So begin several weeks of bliss.

“People think we’re absolutely insane to still be doing this,” says Valerie, 74, a former developer of teaching materials for French as a second language. “But for us it’s much more than a summer cottage. It’s a real devotion.”

There’s the smell of pine needles, the sound of loons, visits from moose and nights spent watching the moon. “There’s nothing more beautiful,” she says.

Time is of course taking its toll. The six weeks at the cabin last summer were the shortest the Argues have spent there in 43 years of marriage. But the pull of Algonquin continues to give them strength.

Much to their relief, the Ontario government is poised to let them enjoy their rustic cabin for as long as they’re able. The cabin — and 325 other cottages in Algonquin Provincial Park — sits on public land. Leases for those cottage lots expire in December 2017, and the Ministry of Natural Resources has proposed extending them for another 21 years.

After a low-key, six-week public consultation, which ended in mid-

December, Natural Resources Minister Michael Gravelle described the proposed lease extensions as “both fiscally and ecologically responsible” in a statement to the Star.

“We feel we’ve made the park a better place,” he says in a phone interview.

Cottagers have proven to be good park stewards, Olsen argues. They’re the driving force behind Friends of Algonquin Park, a non-profit group that develops educational programs. They clean up trails and portages. They help canoeists in trouble — more than 430 documented cases in the past 20 years. And their negative impact on the environment is minimal.

“There is no scientific evidence of pollution, and we’ve been studied and studied,” Olsen says.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, which campaigns to protect wilderness areas, opposes the lease extensions. Executive director Janet Sumner argues the ministry has failed to conduct “ecological integrity” studies that would assess the impact on the park of cottagers, roads and logging.

“You can’t blindly go in and decide to do this without actually having done your homework,” Sumner says. “It’s fine for the government to say, ‘We’re going to extend the leases.’ But what’s the rationale?

“The leases last until 2017,” she adds. “Why isn’t the government doing good public policy by sitting down, doing an ecological integrity plan, and in the context of that, coming up with a plan for the cottages?”

Jolanta Kowalski, a spokesperson for the ministry, said in a statement the ministry would consider the ecological impact of the cottages at some point in the lease extension process.

Sumner doesn’t doubt the passion cottagers have for the park. But she questions the private profit that also comes with exclusive leases on public land. One cottage recently sold for $699,000.

Algonquin Park is 7,630 square kilometres of forest and lakes about a three-hour drive north of Toronto. The total area occupied by cottages is 0.02 per cent of the park, according to ministry officials.

Each year, the park gets 100,000 campground visits, 178,000 day-use visits and 278,000 backcountry visits. It wasn’t nearly as popular when it was established as Ontario’s first provincial park in 1893.

In the early 1900s, in an effort to encourage tourism and generate revenue, the government began leasing land for cottages in Algonquin and Rondeau Provincial Park on Lake Erie, where public resistance to a 2010 proposal to extend leases pushed the government to conduct an environmental assessment, which is yet to be completed.

At Algonquin, the first two lots were leased on Canoe Lake in 1905. But the program didn’t take off until the 1920s, when the provincial government struggled with budget deficits. Valerie Argue’s parents, Douglas Young and Phyllis Brett, built their cabin in 1949, hauling material by truck from Toronto and bringing logs to the site by boat.

In 1954, the government reversed course. Restoring the park to its natural state became the priority. The cottages, the government decided, had to go. It gave them another 21-year lease to get used to the idea, extending the end date two more times until everyone ended up with the current deadline of Dec. 31, 2017.

“It’s emotion over ecology,” says Sumner, explaining why she believes governments keep extending leases. “No government wants to be the government that pulls the trigger.”

If leases are not extended, cottagers have the option of dismantling and hauling out their cottages or giving them to the government. If the government were to then dismantle the cottages it receives, the former leaseholders would be billed for the work.

These potential costs might not cause too much bother for a couple of high-profile cottagers, including Roots co-founders Michael Budman and Don Green. But for most, it would be financially draining, if not ruinous.

It costs $8.6 million a year to operate and maintain Algonquin Park. In 2011, rents from cottagers — ranging from $530 to $4,024 a year — totalled $460,000. A service fee of $205 per cottage for garbage collection and road maintenance netted another $66,000. The revenue goes into the Ontario Parks Special Purpose Account, which is used for all 335 provincial parks.

Ministry officials expect the proposed leases will increase revenue by setting rents at market value. They also impose a long list of restrictions. Cottages can’t be used as permanent residences, can’t be expanded and can’t be sublet. The building of new structures is banned, but lease holders can apply to replace existing ones with a one-storey building. Shorelines can’t be altered, existing docks can only be replaced by floating ones and septic tanks must be inspected periodically.

The cottagers have some influential backers, including former park superintendent G.E. Martelle, former managing director of Ontario Parks Norm Richards and former premier Bill Davis.

John Winters, superintendent of Algonquin Park from 1996 to 2011, refuses to take sides. He says the ecological impact of the cottagers has never been studied. But he describes the leaseholders as “a great group of people to work with. They’re park lovers first and cottage leaseholders second.

“These aren’t cottages that are flipped every two, three or five years,” he adds. “A lot of these cottages have been there for 60, 80, 100 years and have been in the same family over that period of time.”

Their presence, however, restricts the park’s use. Most of the cottages are on lakes close to Highway 60 — Cache Lake, Canoe Lake and Smoke Lake. And people aren’t allowed to camp on lakes with cottagers.

Twenty-one of the leased lots are in the park’s interior. Winters says the government should phase out those leases. Canoeists who make the effort of portaging their way deep into the park should be rewarded with an environment more natural than lakes with cottages, Winters says.

The debate over cottagers, Winters argues, distracts from greater pressures threatening Algonquin. Fully 51 per cent of the park is open to logging. Winters’ concern is the 6,000 kilometres of gravel roads mostly built and reserved for logging. As roads proliferate, so will the demand for their use for reasons other than logging, he argues.

“There’s no bigger issue in Algonquin Park than roads,” he says.

Fuelling his worry is a recent land claim draft agreement between the province, the federal government and the Algonquins of Ontario. It gives the aboriginal group hunting, fishing and logging rights in most of Algonquin park, along with access to roads. The details have yet to be negotiated. But Winters fears a dramatic increase in vehicles on park roads.

When it comes to the park’s long-term conservation, environmentalists and cottagers are allies. The immediate concern for cottagers, however, is their own futures. For the Argues, not getting a lease extension would mean the end of their days in Algonquin.

“There’s no way we can go on canoe trips — those days are gone,” says Valerie, noting the health of her husband, a former superintendent of delivery at the Star, has been fragile of late. “If we lose the lease, we lose the park entirely, really. There are lodges but they’re very expensive.”

Her father worked for the United Nations, first in the personnel department and later with the International Labour Organization. For a family often on the move, the Algonquin cottage was a peaceful refuge. The Argues have a bronze replica of it in their Toronto townhouse.

“It’s my home,” Valerie says. “I’ve lived in 27 different homes in my life but that one has always been there. It’s the place I love.”

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